2017 July #1

Tuesday night, we were tired and sleepy, so we ordered some Pizza Hut. They had an online special, so we divided a large. I find Pizza Hut to have 90% crust, with only about 10% toppings, and their tomato sauce doesn’t taste very flavourful. Not like Pizza Nova… but ah so expensive. We still have to go to Pizza Libretto some time. I’ve yet to try, and Serena wants to show me what they’re like.

Wednesday’s lunch, we ordered some Mapo Tofu from Some Time Chinese Restaurant.

What a name, only Some Time… Makes you wonder what they sell at other times. Better not to ask.

We went and got some water filter after work. For some reason, we thought our filter lasts 1 year. But ha… it’s just the regular Brita, which is supposed to get changed every 2 months! Oops…

For dinner we cooked the beef cheeks with the pressure cooker. It came out okay, but I’ll need to remember to do these things differently next time:

Set the pressure to High. I forgot the left it on Medium, so after one hour, the collagen didn’t melt as much as I was expecting it to (not that I’ve ever cooked this before).

Use beef stock. That should add to the flavour more than just soy sauce and water.

Add onions and carrots. That should add to more flavour.

On Thursday, I went to the Ryerson Farmer’s Market. There aren’t that many vendors, but one of them is this Ryerson Urban Farm, which grows vegetables on the rooftop of the Engineering Building.

So I bought a pint of Gherkins. Nice crispy ones to eat raw.

I bought some chicken legs from Sanagan’s, and tried to make a simple teriyaki chicken. I deboned and deskinned two legs, and marinated a bit with salt. The cooking was fairly fast and easy.

I also added some baby potatoes, which I microwaved to parcook. I shouldn’t have done that, because the waxy potatoes actually ended up drying up too much.

In the evening we went to see Spider-man: Homecoming in IMAX 3D. It was really good! There was good humour throughout, and the acting was wonderful for both the young Spider-man and Michael Keaton playing the Vulture. The cameos from Robert Downey Jr. adds good character, too, playing the father figure.

I went to Sanagan’s again, this time for ribs. Looking online, side ribs (spare ribs) are said to be more tender, as it has more fat content than back ribs, which are leaner and have more meat. So I bought a rack of side ribs (11 bones). We ended up finishing the entire rack in one meal.

I was scared to use the short cooking time of 16-25 minutes on the recipe, because that seems too fast! So I pressure cooked for 45 minutes. The meat fell off the bones… Yeah, maybe next time I’ll just cook for 30 minutes.

After the pressure cooker. I brushed on BBQ sauce and baked in the oven for 15 more minutes. The sugar in the sauce caramelized a bit and concentrated into a drier glaze.

It turned out pretty well. I paired it with some cucumbers and pomegranate.

After work, we went down to the PATH and grabbed another piece of Nadege. The strawberry cheesecake this time. Fairly good this time.

Since we cooked at home for most of the week, we went out to eat for dinner. We splurged at a Chinese seafood restaurant because Serena has been craving lobster for a while.

The Golden healthy soup was gritty and didn’t have much taste. We didn’t like it much.

The battered fish fillet was quite nice though. The pepper sauce was good but would have been better with less salt. Broccoli paired well with it .

The lobsters were… Serena enjoyed it, but I thought the texture was tough and tasted bitter. I was not a fan… The claws were about the only parts I thought were okay.

We were actually full after that. So the fried rice and honey ribs we packed to go home, and had them for breakfast the next morning.

A little dry, but okay.

For dessert, a sweet green bean soup. I really like those as a summer dessert!

On Monday night, we went to Kinka for their version of Summerlicious.

For $29 per person, it was very reasonable, given the variety.

They had a special welcoming greeting card for making a reservation! Super cool!

The cold tofu salad was pretty good. Nice and refreshing.

The chicken skewers were nicely done too. A little salty for Serena, but pretty good.

Ah, the scorched boxed sushi. We’re spoiled from JaBistro for their aburi oshizushi, but these were pretty good too. Still scared about worms from that eel documentary, but ah…